This is a News and Rumours Roundup for Warpath and Mantics other Science Fiction Tabletop Miniature games.

These SciFi rumours have been updated as of February 2nd, 2012.

Recent updates are in Green. Sources are from a combination of contacts within Mantic, hobby industry insiders, video and online interviews, with the odd tidbit picked up from this and other forums, and Mantics own Newsletter and Website.

PROJECT PANDORA-Release expected for April 2012, with a prerelease unveil on February 13th.-A "Dwarf Kings Hold in Space" style of boardgame.-The Corporation and The 8th Race will be the miniatures contained in the game.

WARPATH MINIATURES

MARAUDERS (Space Orcs)- The best shock troops (and mercenaries) in the galaxy. Trained from barbarians by the Corporation, but broke away (violently) and now work for themselves. The A-team of Warpath.

FORGEFATHERS (Space Dwarfs)- Elite space Dwarfs based on Norse mythology. Only race powerful enough to stand up to the Corporation.

- The Drakkarim(pictured above) are the next ForgeFather mini's to be released.- Mantic is also coming out with several different Bitz packs so folks can add a bit of variety to ther units.

- The first Corporation vehicle will like be something "Hummer" like.- Ronnie has said that any tank kits Mantic might do will likely be straight resin and that they would not be cheap, but that they just might have something out in 2012.

THE 8TH RACE (Vermynn)- Mantic is saying nothing about this race/army, except for possibly gerbils. Giant, vicious, humanoid gerbils.- The 8th Race will actually be the 4th army released.- The exact date of release is unknown, but given that they are expected to be one of the two races being features in a boxed game with an April release date, they should be showing up pretty quick after The Corporation.

REBS (Mixed Races)- Breakaway from the Corporation, plus a variety of non-human races. A rebel alliance, which may or may not involve psychic trickery and glow-in-the-dark swords. The entire cast of the Cantina bar. List will start mostly human (70%) but will look towards encompassing lots of aliens. Also, could be a testing ground for new unit types.- Order and date of release unkown.

THE PLAGUE (Space Zombies)- Alessio is more of a fan of slow zombies. Think Resident Evil's genetic experiments, Dawn of the Dead. Plague causes nervous system damage most of the time, creating Zombie Hordes, although in rare cases it causes random mutations.- Order and date of release unknown.

ASTERIANS (Space Elves)- Based very much on the concept of Grey Aliens. Superfast ships, turn up, take specimen, vanish. They have pointy ears.- May have an ingame teleportation ability.- Order and date of release unknown.

-Thanks to Warseer poster Stormcrow, we have some screen captures from a Beasts of War video of examples of concept art for some of the upcoming Warpath vehicles. Just click on the links below.

So far, there wasn't much there that I didn't at least *think* I already knew, but having confirmation was nice. Having two "Mantic Original" armies for KoW was encouraging though. They'll have all the bases covered, so it's time to take a risk here or there.

Sci-Fi is where the money is, and it's time to take shots for it. Fantasy is what I love, but I won't begrudge them hitting Sci-Fi a bit.

As far as the ogres, I'm not terribly worried about not seeing them, and here's why: what would ogres bring to the game? Other than being large models (which may present certain technical and cost problems), how would they play differently from, say, orcs? I've been trying to envision what they would do to feel different, and I can't see it just yet in KoW. They're also sort of a trap in terms of style. If you make them just fat-bellied guys, then it's "just a GW knock-off". If you make them entirely different, you alienate a lot of the potential customers on an army that seems to be a low draw in the first place. So...again, it's not troubling me.

Similarly, I'm not worried about the delay in producing minis. There are bound to be some technical issues in designing the vehicles that they would want to iron out. Also, there are a lot of different troop types out there already, so getting ones that look slick enough to sell piles of minis to recoup the money may be tricky -- so you make sure you've got a good rule set which may tend to draw people into buying the minis in this case. Plus, there are plenty of people who have piles of minis for games already. For KoW, Mantic needed some way of generating money to get started and so they started selling minis. Right now, they've got seed money. Why not get the jump on the rules test and let the minis follow this time?

I dislike the "paid alpha" idea just in principle. Of course, I can be bought. I'd much rather see it be open to Mantic Fanatics only. But also, every penny paid in website subscription fees is a penny not put towards a game. I may do it just to get access for this, but we'll see. My regular group are not strong fans of Sci-Fi anyways.

Overall, it wasn't earth-shattering, but I heard a lot of things I liked in it.

Coming from a strong old school AD&D background, I'm still hoping to one day being able to conduct a KoW campaign based on those classic monsters... I already have two large units of Kobolds, am slowly building up minotaurs, and always have my eyes open for other monster minis that I could make units of, like Ogres. Which in my mind would play nothing like Orcs.

And I've never liked GW's take on Ogres.

I don't begrudge Mantic going scifi either, even though I've not collected minis of that genre myself. Well maybe except for some of my pulp miniatures... I've some rocketeers, like in Disneys The Rocketeer movie, and then I have a UFO model I bought too, and the Classic War of The Worlds alien spacecraft I also bought for my pulp games... Hmmm I still haven't found any suitable aliens for them yet.

I think the move to sci-fi was inevitable. I shant be paying for access to the alpha rules though - for one thing I don't think I like that approach and I also hadn't watched BoW before: 30 minutes last night put me off watching any more on their ste.

I'm really looking forward to the KoW book. I'd really hoped they would do this and I'll not be disappointed

The scifi stuff is looking alright. Definitely unique looking as far as what other major gaming brands are doing. I love the fact some people on other forums are raging that Mantic are copying GW when it comes to scifi... nothing looks remotely similar to what GW is doing.

I think the most exciting thing for me is that the vehicles so far look like they will be to scale with the infantry. True, don't really see the scale of the thundercat/voltron inspired half track/cat/tank/transport... ok I give up, wehatever it is but going from the other concepts it's probably going to be scaled ok.

Does the fact that a vehicle should look like it can hold whatever its transport capacity is matter to other people here?

Well as I like to see my fellow Irishmen do well, I am a backstage subscriber (it is only the price of a pint and a couple of packets of crisps a month).

Nothing much up yet, just the names of the factions... I feel bad as I would like to tell the Fanatics but feel it would be unfair on Beasts of War as obviously this is a big part of the launch of their subscription service.

@Robert: Yes, thats right. The subscripiton is not this expensive. But in my case, it would only be for the rules once... So, I will wait some 8 weeks or such longer for the offical release later on...

Nothing much up yet, just the names of the factions... I feel bad as I would like to tell the Fanatics but feel it would be unfair on Beasts of War as obviously this is a big part of the launch of their subscription service.